Making Strides Towards Decarbonization

For decades, petroleum has been a key resource used to make polyester-based fibers for a wide variety of applications. Historically, PrimaLoft has utilized polyester as the main ingredient for the fibers in our primary product lines. It is important for us, and for industries across the globe, to reckon with the negative impact petroleum based raw materials have on our planet. Over the past 10 years, PrimaLoft has invested heavily in developing technology, and the respective supply chains, that utilizes recycled content as the raw material used to create our high-performance polyester fibers.

Utilizing recycled fiber is great but, it is no longer enough.

In April 2021, PrimaLoft partnered with Origin Materials to produce polyester fiber made from non-petroleum, carbon-negative raw materials.

PrimaLoft Partners with Origin Materials

Origin Materials is the world’s leading carbon negative materials company. The Origin platform turns cellulose-based feedstocks such as wood, cardboard and pulp waste into cost-advantaged, carbon negative materials that reduce the need for fossil resources.

• Trees capture carbon dioxide from the environment and then the carbon is stored in the wood of the tree.

• The carbon that is captured in the wood of the tree remains in the molecular backbone of the C6 cellulose.

• The cellulose feedstock used by Origin is therefore a carbon negative material.

A new development. In recent months, PrimaLoft has utilized Origin technology to produce a fine denier polyester fiber suitable for use in textiles. Origin and PrimaLoft have collaborated with a third-party polymerization company to produce polyester chip that PrimaLoft has begun extruding into fiber. Our intention in the coming year is to make nonwoven insulations utilizing this advanced polymer fiber, without compromising our high performance standards. We are also in the process of securing approximately five brand partners to showcase the new fiber technology in concept garments. Origin & PrimaLoft will continue to collaborate on a multiyear development plan to commercialize this disruptive technology, with the hopes to have prototypes ready by 2023.

Making Strides Towards Decarbonization

In 2019 and 2020, PrimaLoft has taken a deep dive into understanding our company-wide carbon footprint. The majority of our impact is associated with the manufacturing facilities throughout our global supply chain network used to produce PrimaLoft products. The carbon footprint associated with that production stems from both the textile manufacturing process, as well as raw materials. And PrimaLoft is taking steps to reduce our impact at each level.

Manufacturing

Over the past five years, PrimaLoft has invested heavily in disrupting traditional manufacturing processes. The result is PrimaLoft® P.U.R.E.™ , a renewable manufacturing technology that is Produced Using Reduced Emissions.

PrimaLoft completed a comprehensive environmental assessment of the insulation manufacturing processes and identified the most impactful opportunities to reduce carbon emissions. From there, PrimaLoft engineers focused on increasing energy efficiency by making changes around the fiber recipe, introducing new thermal equipment, and optimizing the source of energy to drastically reduce carbon emissions. This proprietary process reduces emissions by up to 70%, with developments in the works that will raise that number to as much as 95%, for specific products.

P.U.R.E. Manufacturing Carbon Footprint Impact 2021

P.U.R.E. Manufacturing (Actual): 6,165 kgs CO2e

Standard Manufacturing (Equivalent): 11,989 kgs CO2e

Materials

In addition to innovations at the manufacturing level, PrimaLoft’s longstanding use of recycled material also represents a drastic reduction in emissions.

Since 2015, the use of recycled material has saved more than 22.9 million kgs of CO2, compared to using virgin polyester. This represents a reduction of 43%.

In 2021, we saved more than 6.4 million kgs of CO2 – a 66% reduction.

Recycled Materials Carbon Footprint Impact 2021

Recycled Materials (Actual): 3,372,974 kgs CO2

Standard Manufacturing (Equivalent): 9,801,719 kgs CO2

What’s Next? Packaging.

In 2022, PrimaLoft will be determining the carbon footprint associated with the current packaging of PrimaLoft finished goods and will begin to identify and source alternative packaging solutions with lower CO2 profiles. PrimaLoft will also analyze the CO2 footprint associated with shipping of raw materials (inputs) into our contract manufacturing locations as well as the shipping of finished goods (outputs) out of our contract manufacturing locations that PrimaLoft is responsible for.